With his wife, Jane, left, and daughter Mona and grandson Ira Ganz to his right, Neil Golub speaks about the A World of Difference organization that he and his family established in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League during the dedication ceremony for the interfaith chapel named in the family's honor at the Doane Stuart School in Rensselaer Thursday morning. (Mike McMahon / The Record)

RENSSELAER -- Dressed in uniform, Doane Stuart School students gathered in the school's recently renovated chapel Thursday morning to witness a ceremony dedicating the space to those that financed its renewal.

A former gymnasium, the chapel was transformed by a generous donation from the Golub family, owners of Price Chopper supermarkets, who were honored at the ceremony.

"Today we are celebrating this chapel as a place of respect for all people and we are celebrating Doane Stuart as a place where we can learn to appreciate our differences" said Neil Golub.

Beginning in 2008, renovations turned the once "dusty" gymnasium into an ornate space lit by skylights, decorated with hand-carved Art Deco paneling and furnished with pews from the former St. Rita's Roman Catholic Church in Cohoes. In 2010, a pipe organ purchased by parents on eBay from the State University of New York at Purchase was installed. All those amenities were absent when trustees first walked into the space, said Noel Hogan, president of the board of trustees.

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"It was poorly lit, it was very dusty, there was no magnificent pipe organ in the back, there were no pews. There was a musty odor in the air and I'm pretty certain it was not lingering incense. And there was a big hole right up there," said Hogan, pointing to a corner of the chapel's high ceilings.

In honor of the contribution from the Golub family, which made the chapel into the space it is today, a plaque in the chapel was dedicated to Neil, Jane, and Mona Golub, as well as Mona's son, Ira Ganz, who is a sophomore at Doane Stuart.

The chapel, with symbols of the world's religions on its walls -- a menorah, a cross, and an symbol denoting Islam -- was the focus of their donation because it aligned with the goals of A World of Difference, said Neil and Jane Golub. That institute, part of the Anti-Defamation League, was created through a partnership with the Golub family 27 years ago to work against hate, bullying and intolerance because of a person's color, religion, or body shape.

"Nicknamed AWOD, it was created and designed to teach students of all ages that hate, bullying and intolerance because of a person's color, religion or body shape was unacceptable and wrong," Jane Golub told the assembled students, trustees and faculty.

It was a long journey from the school's former location on South Pearl Street in Albany, inside the former Kenwood convent, to their new home along Washington Avenue, in a building that once housed the Rensselaer Elementary School. The school stated the move was prompted by religious differences with the Society of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Catholic order of nuns who owned the former convent. Those differences were likely exacerbated when the order rebuffed the school's offer to buy the site for $7 million.

"It wasn't that long ago that it would be very hard to imagine that we could in this place today," said Hogan. "We wandered from Saratoga to Columbia County; we wandered east, we wandered west. Mr. (John B.) Robinson (past president of the board of trustees, stepped down in 2009) had us visit sites on the edge of cliffs, in heavily wooded meadows, all sorts of unpaved, unplowed, undeveloped sites, looking for that home. He had us visit buildings of every shape, age, size, some large, some small, some rectangular, square, circular, and some shapes I couldn't imagine were planned."

Doane Stuart's new home was purchased from the Rensselaer School District in 2008 for $4 million. Renovations in the 117,000 square-foot space began in 2008 and were completed for the 2009-10 school year.

When the school moved to Rensselaer, enrollment stood at 288, and has grown at a rate of 4 percent, which has held true over the past five years, despite poor economic conditions. According to the director of admission, Michael P. Green, there are 303 students presently attending the school.